C.S. Lewis on what makes the enemy so nervous...

My good friend and ally, John, and I were noticing that just about everyone we know -- especially people on the front lines of Jesus' mission to rescue hearts -- was in deep pain or entrenched suffering of some sort.  It's almost uncanny that so many of our allies are suffering;  and it can't be explained away by, "Well, everyone goes through something now and then:  that's just the way it is."  [That sounds a bit naive to me.]

John brought up the following reference from The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis.  Uncle Screwtape, the elder devil, is telling his nephew the very thing that makes evil itself nervous:

“Sooner or later he [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives.  He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish…He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice.  He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand…Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending,  to do our enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” 

― Uncle Screwtape.  From C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

•  "..to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish." 



• "Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending,  to do our enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

If you've ever read my blog or my book, you'll know that I've never been one to advocate robotic duty or heart-less obedience; and I'm not sure Lewis is either here.  At first blush, this may paint a rather unfavorable view of God, but note the following:

• Lewis does not say that God has left the creature – but that in our “conscious experience” it seems that way. 

• He also doesn’t say that he takes away his presence in these times, but only his hand – so that we can walk when we didn’t think we could; or at least in a strength and capacity we have not ‘till now walked. 

• It also doesn’t say that we have been forsaken, only that the creature "asks why he has been forsaken,”  given the agony of his experience.

What makes the foul ones nervous?  When an ally of Jesus keeps getting back up, refusing darkness the opportunity to gloat, and continues in desire-less plodding to carry hope into the Babylonian lions' den.  Or to reach Mordor where the one ring will be swallowed in fire forever.  Only then can Frodo go home.  And for such a time as this, to face-down the king who has enslaved her people, exposing the plot, setting off a redemptive sequence in history that far outstrips Esthers diminuitive status.

"Take heart...for I have overcome the world."  And because you are his ally, you are overcoming the world as well."

Why God became ruined

"A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."  - Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - What I Learned While Editing My Life

God is also a character in a Story. However, even though he is its author, though he could write a less painful part for himself, he subjects himself to the story.     He's in fact, the hero, the protagonist.  If he doesn't come through, then you don't get to live.  So what does God have to overcome in order to get what he's after? 

First of all, what exactly is he after? 
He's after the total and supernatural re-making of each person -- which means he has to rescue their hearts.  Rescue the heart and you rescue the person.  Only restored persons are able to live well in a restored habitat.  God is after the thorough remaking of all living things, so that they may receive his affection and direct, unfiltered Life. 

“This world is a great sculptor’s shop.  We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.”  - C.S. Lewis

This has already been done.  The Great Lion, Aslan, by the stirring of his own breath, has released those bound in stone into his own immortality.  Sodom and Gomorrah has been reversed.  This is the gift of salvation.

Second, what does God overcome to get it?
The unintended consequences of his Beloved's freedom. The unintended consequences of his Beloved's freedom.

He has to enter into conflict with his own creation's ruinous affliction and overcome it.  He ties the millstone around his own neck. He goes down with the ship.  Because he is truly free, he discards his own freedom by becoming ruined himself [God "became sin for us"], turning the human heart back towards his affection. He gave the Christian her new and noble heart, so that she could return to God with all her heart.

"A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."

All things are not good.

Aren't you a bit tweaked whenever a well-meaning friend attempts to shape your thinking by quoting, "All things work together for good..."?  But wait a minute.  I'm hurting here, and you've just avoided my pain by quoting Scripture at me.

Thankfully, a friend of mine didn't do that the other day.  He shared with me a perspective of author Dallas Willard on this passage:  Just because all things work together for good, does not imply that all those things are good things.  Some of them might be down right nasty, and it's not helpful to sugercoat them.  However, just as you wouldn't want to eat the raw eggs or the flower by themselves while mixing up the ingredients to a cake, you can be assured that the final outcome will be worked into a whole that supercedes the sum of its ingredients.  You do want the cake... as a whole. 

I think this framework does justice to our pain, while acknowledging God's redemptive and creative hand.

The erosion of confidence

"You'll never find the life you're looking for."

...But the sabotage begins with the painful accumulation of thoughts like these:

•  "I didn't think it would turn out like this."
•  "I'm tired of getting hurt.  Maybe it's not worth it."
•  "I know you want this for me, God; but how long, Lord.  How long must it take?!"

It is hard, and it does hurt.  A person can get to the point where the only apparent conclusion is: "I'll never find what I'm looking for-- Why do others find the life they want, but I can't? Did I blow it somewhere? Is God angry?  Am I not hearing him?" And once the lies begin to calcify, some part of our heart begins to shut down. Faith, hope, and love drain out of the cheerless and weary heart.

But it feels so true. Our experience of pain can erode our confidence and hope in a way that only our experience of the moment feels true to us -- All other interpretations of reality get blotted out.  Only the subjective is allowed to be true, and any Perspective that stands outside of us is forgotten.  Faith, hope and love give way to tunnel vision... and something in us dies.

"The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives"  - Albert Schweitzer

Jesus, what do you know about our Father's heart here that I need to know?  Where does your confidence come from?

Survival Tool - Building a memory library

Held hostage for 1,967 days in the Columbian jungle.

The plane that was carrying the three American contract workers crashed in the dense jungles of Columbia.   Surviving the crash was only the beginning of what was to come.  Tom, Marc and Keith (and their pilot and Columbian co-worker) immediately found themselves in a hot zone ruled by the FARC -- a notorious terrorist organization known for kidnappings, drug trafficking, hostage-taking, and murdering innocent civilians. 

The FARC quickly swarmed out of the jungle towards the crumpled aircraft -- beginning Day One of a five-year plus captivity for the three men in the jungles of Columbia.  (The pilot and the Columbian on board with the three were immediately separated from the group.  Later, news reached the three Americans that their friends had been executed by the FARC.)

In order to cope with the dehumanizing madness of captivity, one of the American contractor hostages created what he called a "library of memories," a virtual collection of moments and recollections of his family back home, childhood memories, and pre-captivity life.  The FARC guerrillas could take away his freedom of movement, institute 40-day forced marches, put him in chains, or refuse him the right to empty his bowels in private, but they could not take away what was inside his head.  That "library of memories" was a virtual room he could walk into at any moment and pull a memory off the shelf. 

As I read their account, I was struck by how helpful this could be during moments or chapters of spiritual disorientation:  those times where God seems cruel or absent, and appears to be markedly silent; when what I hope for feels like it will never come.  So I created my own library of memories.  The "spines" on some of my titles read: 

• Lynn -- Here She Is, Jim.
• Olivia & Nate:  Gifts
• Rafting Rescue
• Chosen -- Len Sweet
• Peterborough Confirmed
• Dwight's Endorsement

When I forget the history of God's compassionate intervention in my life, I go to my library and pull off a title from the shelf.

What book titles would be in your "library of memories?"

What is Jesus restoring?

What is Jesus up to?  What is he longing to give?

"Now these three remain:  faith, hope and love."  

The problem with this passage is that it's too familiar.  We hear, "Faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love."  Blah, blah, blah.  Nice wedding sermon.  Wonderful ideals.  Where's the reception buffet?

But I began reconsidering this trio of bottom-line values.  Not the concept of faith, hope and love; nor the theological ideals of faith, hope and love.  Rather, the faith, hope and love of Jesus himself - the confidence that Jesus has.

If that's what's at the bottom of it all, after all else is sifted away, when immature and undeveloped humanity is finally whole, when mirrors are no longer needed...then there must be something more weighty about faith, hope and love than I'd assumed.  These three must be at the heart of what Jesus is up to.

The offer -  this side of the veil - is faith, hope and love.  It is what is needed until Alpha becomes Omega and unseen is seen.  Faith, as John Ortberg suggests is not the absence of doubt:  rather, faith (with all it's questions and doubt) is exactly what you have when you don't have the longed-for thing, or person, fully in front of you.  You don't expect faith to see fully.  Faith, for now, is the way we see.

And hope is the confidence, the settled agreement, that behind the mystery is not a crotchety and manipulative Wizard of Oz, who has no real power but only billows of smoke and clanging machinery; but, rather, hope is a Father who aches until his children are brought into his own happiness.  Hope is what you have when your desires feel caged and wounded, rather than loosed and liberated.  Hope is what you have this side of the veil.

And love is what you have on both sides.  Perhaps it is why love is the greatest of the three.

Therefore, because that trio is at the heart of what God is giving us now, these three are precisely what the Enemy is trying to sabotage. The ruined ones come to ‘steal, kill and destroy” what, exactly? …our faith, hope, and love.  In the place of faith, hope and love, the Enemy brings in false substitutes, as he often does:

1. Against faith -- Striving -- and it's message: “I must provide what God is withholding.” Striving occurs when we no longer believe our deep desires matter to God.
2. Against hope --  Despair & resignation --  and the message: “This is the way things really are. Things are only as they seem.”
3. Against love -- Shame -- and the message:  "The story isn’t turning out liked I’d hoped for because there’s something wrong with me." Or, the Enemy brings abandonment and it's message:  "I’m on my own: no one is fighting for me."

Be vigilant for those ways in which God is offering you faith, hope and love.
And, be ready for the ways in which the Ruined One is trying to steal them from you.  The armor of God is real -- and available for times such as these -- clothe yourself with it.

It's also helpful to ask Jesus what he knows about the Father's heart and movements in our lives that would restore our confidence. 

He is giving, even now.